Like Old Times

In the days of jet and rocket power, aviation's headline-getters usually fly worlds faster, farther and higher than such lonesome greats of the olden days as Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post and Lindbergh. But the airman who comes closest to matching the oldtime sense of personal challenge and adventure in the flying business is the record-seeking light-plane pilot. Last week Minnesota-born Max Conrad, 57, bumped onto the runway at El Paso's International Airport after soloing a little Piper Comanche a nonstop 6,911 miles across the Atlantic from Casablanca in 56 hr. 26 min., thereby breaking a record in his weight class (2,204 to 3,858 lbs.).

Last spring Conrad, an ex-charter-service pilot who has logged more than 36,000 hours and more than 60 transatlantic crossings, made a Casablanca-to-Los Angeles run in the same plane with a 250-h.p. six-cylinder engine and also broke a record (TIME, June 15). This time he switched to a 180-h.p. four-cylinder engine, filled his wing tanks with 60 gal. of fuel, loaded four additional tanks (300 gal.) in the cabin and fuselage. With no supplies except three jugs of water, tea and coffee, he set out across the water.

By day he flew only 100 ft. over the Atlantic, at night he climbed to 500 ft. He made hourly radio position reports, saw no other planes or ships, never got sleepy enough to use his stay-awake pills. After 28 hours, he sighted Trinidad off Venezuela, turned up the Antilles toward the U.S., bypassing Cuba ("because I didn't want to get shot down"). He had enough fuel to make it to Los Angeles, but decided to land at El Paso because his jugs were empty and he was parched with thirst. Said he, as he downed a bottle of pop after landing: "I could have drunk a barrel of water if I'd had it."

Another member of the small company of light-plane adventurers set a record last week. Peter Gluckmann, 33, a San Francisco watchmaker, piloted a single-engine Cessna 172 from Oakland to Honolulu in 20 hr. 39 min., thus became just about the biggest man (250 lbs.) to fly the smallest plane (145 h.p.) over the longest distance (2,400 miles) of open water.

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